I feel five right now. I'm watching Roseanne on TV land. I can almost hear my dad yelling at my mom to turn that stupid show off.

The-Dullahan

01-13-11, 01:28 AM

When I was five...Well, I was basically an exact copy of my current self in a body just under three feet.

Jesda

01-13-11, 03:14 AM

Daaaaan
beckyyyy
djjjjjjjj

The-Dullahan

01-13-11, 04:17 PM

^ I never saw that show, but I knew this kid from Disney who we named DJ, because he apparently looked just like the kid from Rosanne. He probably had a real name too, but that's not important.

orconn

01-14-11, 12:59 PM

If I were to feel five again, I would feel the weight of a "Hoppalong Cassidy Two Gun Six Shooter Set" on my hips and be waiting, watching a test pattern on the screen, for television to come on at 5 o'clock!

When TV finally came on I'd get to see the next installment of a "Buck Rogers" serial ..... "Howdy Dooodie" was still a few years away ("Howdie Doodie was never my cup of tea, not even at seven or eight years old!). For most people a TV set was still many years away.

If it were Summer, we cooled off with lemonade on the back patio under the Lanai and slept on "sleeping porches". Homes didn't have even window air conditioners yet!

On Sunday I would be stuffed into an itchy wool suit with a Eton hat and hauled off to Sunday school where I learned to dislike organized religion! Of course I would ride to Sunday school in my Family's only car, a 1940 Packard 120 Touring Sedan (new cars were still hard to get in 1948 and my Dad was too busy overseeing the installation of television stations to have time to get one).

When we drove to Newport Beach, we drove through miles and miles of orange groves, and from Seal Beach south along the Coast there were hundreds of oil wells and huge storage yards where they stored mines and other stuff left over from the Second World War.

By today' standards there wasn't a lot to do, but somehow we used our imaginations and got by!

Stingroo

01-14-11, 01:19 PM

If I were 5 years old right now I'd be sitting in a classroom with people who I thought were far less intelligent than I was - and many of them were... I remember kids in my kindergarten and first grade classes who still didn't know how to read. How insane! Then, at 3:15 I'd be riding home in my dad's Cutlass in the front seat, unless we took the back dirt roads, then I'd be in the back seat looking out the rear window as the rooster tails flew from the tires on the dirt road... When we eventually would get home, I'd go downstairs and immerse myself in LEGOS (I have literally hundreds of thousands of them, even to this day) and probably start building a model city or something of that nature. Then when I would eat dinner and read until 9pm bedtime.

Life was good when I was 5. :)

orconn

01-14-11, 02:56 PM

^^^ We didn't have Legos in the 1950's but we had "Lincoln Logs" and plastic bricks, which were similar to Legos although not as versatile when it came to building things other than buildings. We also had plastic construction sets that were similar to "Tinker Toys" and a lot more versatile when making vehicles and planes and ferris wheels.

And of course, we had a wide variety of electric trains. Being a California kid I wasn't really into electric trains; we didn't play inside that much! But my father sure loved the trains and the accessories that he gave me for Christmas!

By the 1950's I think were had pretty much all the toys that are popular today, with the exception of the computer games, but they were either more nicely made or much more cheaply made than the toys of today. My favorite toys back then were my "Dinky Toy" cars and trucks which 1/43 scale cast metal models of various cars and trucks and military vehicles. I collected, my parents used their acquisition as incentives (bribes) for good behavior, mostly the British and French car models, with the 1939 Lagonda Cabriolet being my favorite. There was a toy stre in Pasadena, CA that carried Dinky Toys (there were over 100 vehicles in the Dinky lineup, I don't know it they were available outside large metropolitan areas. My uncle's chain of toy and model shops in Illinois carried them, but then his stores carried a lot of "high line" toys not generally available outside of NYC, Chicago or L.A.

I had Lincoln Logs when I was a kid too. I built a massive log cabin that was the size of my entire desk once. It was great.

There were also K'nex, but those were stupid.

greencadillacmatt

01-15-11, 03:29 AM

there were also k'nex, but those were stupid.

^Post of the day.

77CDV

01-16-11, 12:31 AM

If I were to feel five again, I would feel the weight of a "Hoppalong Cassidy Two Gun Six Shooter Set" on my hips and be waiting, watching a test pattern on the screen, for television to come on at 5 o'clock!

When TV finally came on I'd get to see the next installment of a "Buck Rogers" serial ..... "Howdy Dooodie" was still a few years away ("Howdie Doodie was never my cup of tea, not even at seven or eight years old!). For most people a TV set was still many years away.

And then you'd turn the set off and watch the picture suddenly contract to a small white dot that slooowly faaaaded aaaawaaayyyyy.

Tube TVs were fun.

greencadillacmatt

01-16-11, 03:08 AM

^Yeah they were. I had one in my room that I got for $5 from a garage sale. It made EVERYTHING purple.

The-Dullahan

01-17-11, 06:47 PM

I didn't have television when I was five. My household actually had somewhere between 10-15 of them, but no cable because we lived someplace too rural, so they were all hooked up to a command centre of VCR's in the living room's entertainment centre.

If I were five I'd be immersed in a wonderful Xanadu of granite and trees (not these "palm" things from Florida)

The best toys were the ones you could build things with. Lego just excelled in that field. there were way better things going on than toys though. For whatever reason, my pirates were always getting eaten by sea monsters or fighting skeletons, my castles were always overrun with daemons and my cityscapes were victim to Zombie Apocalypses (Still have that scene adorning two shelves on the entertainment centre)

Also Sting, I think every sane person from our generation was smarter at five than the monkeys they went to school with. I've met people who had to repeat Kindergarten. Exactly how that is possible, I do not know, but it is probably the purest definition of FAIL.

johnny kannapo

01-17-11, 07:34 PM

I'm sure some of you men were playing with dolls.
It looks to me GI Joe has had the operation.

http://images.wikia.com/gijoe/images/e/e5/GIJoeBasicFig.jpg

orconn

01-17-11, 08:21 PM

^^^ Looks like "action" has a limited meaning with that figure!

dkozloski

01-17-11, 08:52 PM

When I was five the only toy I had was a sandbox and I had to share it with the family cat. There was no TV and only one radio station. The family radio was a built-in in the living room and was connected to an antenna strung from a tall pole in the middle of the garden.

cadillac kevin

01-17-11, 10:11 PM

when I was 5 I had hot wheels and legos. ah, such great memories. I still have the hot wheels somewhere. looking back on it, I had more fun with those things then I ever did with video games I had when I was in my teens (S-NES is still pretty awesome though.)

Kev

01-20-11, 05:41 PM

When I was five the only toy I had was a sandbox and I had to share it with the family cat. There was no TV and only one radio station. The family radio was a built-in in the living room and was connected to an antenna strung from a tall pole in the middle of the garden.They had radio back then when you were five? Wow!

The-Dullahan

01-31-11, 04:19 AM

Apparently nostalgia is a good thing when you are tight on cash, as it turns out I own Lego sets that sell for over $300 on Ebay in decent condition without instructions. Mine are spectacular condition with instructions...

Hmmm...

Who has a 1970 Eldorado for sale?

EChas3

02-01-11, 11:21 PM

You've kept it this long, it must have some value to you. How much?

Just because a similar item is for sale at $300 doesn't mean you will net that.

But have fun!

The-Dullahan

02-02-11, 05:54 PM

No, but about ten or fifteen of them are and the auction prices have only climbed since then. Not selling mine though, because if I did, how would I fill the space on that shelf?

What disturbs me are the sets people are auctioning at $300-$400 are being sold unopened at $750-$800 as if someone would actually pay that.